The pledge establishes an endowed professorship in social entrepreneurship, provides money for entrepreneurial education programming and launches a fundraising challenge that will help pay for the construction of a dedicated space for the college's existing programs in social innovation.

Bill Drayton invented the term “social entrepreneur” and founded Ashoka, the organization that supports 3,500 of them in 93 countries. He’s a legend in the nonprofit world, so I went to him this week to see if he could offer some clarity and hope in discouraging times. He did not disappoint.

“We have had a long-term, successful relationship with Community Housing Capital and this investment continues our support of its mission to create and preserve affordable housing,” said Lucas Pappas, Director of Investments for Calvert Impact Capital. “We are excited to bring new qualified investors into the impact investing space and connect them more directly with strong mission-driven organizations like Community Housing Capital.”

A young social enterprise nonprofit called Bean Voyage is seeking to dramatically increase the incomes of women farmers by cutting middlemen from the supply chain, improving quality and leveraging an e-commerce platform for sales in key consumer markets.